bitrates

[Commasterharry]

hey guys

i cant tell the difference between 128 kbps and 320, or anything in between. couple friends of mine can, they say it sounds more grainy. i've tried and tried but cant hear any difference. my speaker system is a creative 3 piece, it shud be decent enough at least to give out a LITTLE difference.

so i'd like to ask all of you your experiences with different bitrates, the differences, if you hear them.

[Psythik]

Try listening to a hard rock song with a lot of cymbols at 128k; sounds like total crap unless encoded at at least 192k.

[Namelessv1]

Don't know if it's just me, but 128k sounds a bit flat compared to 192k.

[jakeledel]

I can definitely tell the difference. 128 sounds pretty bad. 192 is getting worse to my ears because i've been listening to a lot higher quality stuff for a while.

[S-uper_T-oast]

I can't tell a specific bitrate differnce, but I can easily tell the general area the song is in.

[deeder7001]

i was ripping my cds at 128 and 160 CBR for a while. i recently(the other day) re-ripped a few cds using the alt-preset standard which sounds a lot better. takes about 5 minutes to encode each song but it's worth the wait.

[ScorLibran]

ABX doesn't lie. It's the only way to avoid the placebo effect. You'd be amazed at the difference between what you hear and what you think you hear.

I've measured my own transparency threshold for LAME CBR at around 160kbps, which is why I use --alt-preset standard (tuned VBR @ ~200kbps) for well-assured perceptual transparency.

Other (subpar) MP3 encoders (Xing, Blade, etc.) have to be pushed to 192kbps+ to equal LAME's threshold for me, and none equal LAME's efficiency with --aps. (Testing with problem samples, anyway.)

Ogg Vorbis, MPC and WMA Pro all give me measured transparency closer to 128kbps. I'm an ex-Vorbis guy, but MP3 offers something that I need more and more nowadays: hardware support. So I don't mind sacrificing some disk space for that.

[Mattress]

I can't really tell, though I can usually notice a difference between an mp3 and a CD when I'm listening in my car, so maybe it's my setup on my PC. Usually I'm listening to a low quality shoutcast stream so it doesn't make much difference to me. If I lose a little hi-hat now and then, it's no big deal.

[shakey_snake]

It really important to point out hear the differences in musical styles when talking about perceptual transparencey.
Some of my early '60's garage bands have been recorded on such lo-fi tape and such that you can't tell a huge difference between a 192kbps mp3 and a 128kbps LAME mp3.
However, if I'm listening to something like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, with Flee's bass EQed up like crazy, you can't get it to sound decent at all under 210kbps.

[Mattress]

you'd think it would matter to me a lot since I listen to electronica, but I just don't care that much about it.

[Spazz333]

I've noticed that using a non-flat eq magnifies the bad sounding parts of mp3's. A world of difference when using the full bass/treble setting between 128 and 192 kbps

[gaekwad2]

In my experience encoders make more difference than bitrates (unless you go very low).

Lame -V5 -athaa-sensitivity 1 (~130kbps) is already very close to transparency for me, I only noticed audible artifacts on some sounds like xylophone.

Fraunhofer 128k cbr sounds absolutely horrible in comparison.

[Wolfgang]

[ignorance]What is the alt-preset standard?[/ignorance]

[Commasterharry]

whats an encoder? does it make a difference which encoder you use? if so, which encoder is the best, where to get it, and how to install lol i'm lost

[gaekwad2]

Best mp3 encoder: Lame.

Where to get and how to install: depends on what program you use to rip and encode.

[Wolfgang]

Can you use this alt-preset standard thing with LAME in audiograbber, or Vorbis in Audiograbber?

[grumpyBB]

Yep, I can definitely hear a difference between bitrates. 128 sounds like ass and 160 is noticeably better. I rip everyting at 256 or 320 if it's mp3 or I'll rip ogg's at q7 or higher. When you have a good system and good ears it's not hard to tell a difference.

[Cognition]

I can definitely hear the difference, but only on my headphones, not on my crap speakers.
The main thing you'll notice if you're trying to hear the difference is a loss of high-end, so as was said before you'll lose high-hat etc. But the high-end you lose is still pretty high up there, higher than some speakers can produce anyway.

With encoding alt-preset standard, you don't actually need a program to do it (although it's easier). Don't know if you can do it in Audiograbber, but if you only need to do a couple or so you can download just LAME itself and use the command prompt.
Just chuck the wav into the lame folder. Then go to the command prompt and locate the lame folder. Then type:

lame --alt-preset standard input.wav output.mp3

where input is the name of your wavs, and output is the new name you want. It doesn't like filenames with spaces is all. Also you get a pretty graph thing showing what percantage each bitrate it's using as it encodes.

[Wolfgang]

Originally posted by Cognition
With encoding alt-preset standard, you don't actually need a program to do it (although it's easier). Don't know if you can do it in Audiograbber, but if you only need to do a couple or so you can download just LAME itself and use the command prompt.
Just chuck the mp3s into the lame folder. Then go to the command prompt and locate the lame folder. Then type:

lame --alt-preset standard input.wav output.mp3

where input is the name of your mp3, and output is the new name you want. It doesn't like filenames with spaces is all. Also you get a pretty graph thing showing what percantage each bitrate it's using as it encodes.

I don't get it. So basically you are reencoding mp3s? Do you not mean chucking the wavs into the lame folder and converting them to mp3?

[gaekwad2]

I'd say so.

lame --alt-preset standard input.wav output.mp3

[Cognition]

Yes, I'm an idiot and writing without proof reading. Does a nice mod want to fix that? It's past it's editable time.

Should read:
"Just chuck the wavs into the lame folder."
and
"where input is the name of your wav"

Or even just change it to "audio file" or something, not sure it even has to be a wav.

[gaekwad2]

BTW If you want really extraordinary quality (at 256kbps) get Lame 3.92 from reallyrarewares (doesn't work wih 3.90.3 or 3.96.1) and try the following command line:
lame -V0 --preset radio -k -q9 -b256 -B256 --resample 48 --interch 1 -md -p --noshort --notemp --nores -k --strictly-enforce-ISO --nspsytune --athlower -56 --ns-bass 2 --ns-alto 12 --ns-treble 9 input.wav output.mp3

[apollos]

128 sounds incredibly flat, sharp sounds are most noticeably lost... I can't stand anything below 192... I encode in 256 joint stereo mp3... though I so wish AAC was adopted universally, and there was a program which could convert mp3 to AAC without losing any quality at all *sigh* =/

[gaekwad2]

Why? Is there a player that can play aac and not mp3?

[apollos]

Originally posted by gaekwad2
Why? Is there a player that can play aac and not mp3?

I dunno... I just am happy having a music collection encoded in one format... I'm not one to have ogg and mp3, it's better for tagging and compatibility I guess... or something =/

I hope people abandon mp3 for AAC soon, that'll give me a good reason to cross over to using it.

[Twilightseer]

Originally posted by Cognition
Yes, I'm an idiot and writing without proof reading. Does a nice mod want to fix that? It's past it's editable time.

Should read:
"Just chuck the wavs into the lame folder."
and
"where input is the name of your wav"

Or even just change it to "audio file" or something, not sure it even has to be a wav.

Fixed

And why would anyone in the world use Audiograbber ? The best two rippers in the world are free (CDEX and EAC) and both support alt-presets for on-the-fly encoding with the lame dll

[gaekwad2]

Originally posted by apollos
I dunno... I just am happy having a music collection encoded in one format... I'm not one to have ogg and mp3, it's better for tagging and compatibility I guess... or something =/

I hope people abandon mp3 for AAC soon, that'll give me a good reason to cross over to using it.

I don't think that'll happen soon (if at all).

-poor hardware support
-masses of n00bs using WMP or Musicmatch
-audiophiles prefer Lame aps or Musepack because they're more tested
-GNUers prefer Vorbis
-this test showing the best AAC encoder to be inferior to Vorbis and Musepack and only slightly better than Lame at 128kbps

[apollos]

thank you for that info, makes me feel more content

[Wolfgang]

Originally posted by Twilightseer
Fixed

And why would anyone in the world use Audiograbber ? The best two rippers in the world are free (CDEX and EAC) and both support alt-presets for on-the-fly encoding with the lame dll

I use Audiograbber because it's the first one I ever tried. I didn't pay for it though. A guy in my school did and he gave everyone the installer. Since then I had always used it and encoded at 160 kbps. I don't really notice the difference between 160 and above.

[gaekwad2]

If you can't hear the difference at 160k then alt-preset standard is overkill. You should try lame --alt-preset xxx (enter a bitrate and see how low you can go), lame -V5 --athaa-sensitivity 1 (~130kbps) or Vorbis -q4 (~120kbps).

[Wolfgang]

I shall try that. Cheers.